A day after President Barack Obama applauded Metro Nashville Public Schools’ prekindergarten expansion proposal during a speech in Nashville, Mayor Karl Dean remained noncommittal on supporting it.

“As Mayor Dean has said before, the proposal to expand prekindergarten in Metro Schools is an intriguing idea,” Dean spokeswoman Janel Lacy said in a prepared statement Friday.

“MNPS has expressed a number of budgetary needs for next fiscal year. It’s still very early in the budget process. Mayor Dean will work with MNPS to look at all of the options to further improve our public schools and provide what funding he can to best serve our students, as he has done every year.”

Obama, speaking at Metro’s McGavock High School, singled out Director of Schools Jesse Register’s proposal to increase pre-K seats in Davidson County over the next four years. Obama has made universal preschool a top priority, but it lacks congressional support.

“Encouragingly, 30 states have decided to raise funds on their own and school districts like this one have plans,” Obama said Thursday.

Dean, who met with Register this month to discuss the superintendent’s plan, watched from the front row at the McGavock event as the president lauded early childhood education as “one of the best investments we can make in a child’s life.”

Metro school officials, however, have discussed a potential $23 million revenue shortfall even without what could cost $2 million for just the first year of pre-K expansion. The hope is to ultimately provide preschool for all Nashville parents who want it for their 4-year-olds by 2018.

The mayor, in a December speech in which he called for closer scrutiny of the school district’s spending, warned: “No department gets a blank check, and that includes schools.” Dean, a charter school supporter, has criticized the district’s singling out of charters as the source of financial strains.

Register wants to start expanding pre-K in Nashville by transforming Ross and Bordeaux elementary schools into new pre-K hubs. That would require a new student assignment plan, which the school board is slated to consider in February. He’s hoping to add 500 new pre-K seats this fall and then expand in future years.